Academic Director

Professor Buttigieg has a Bachelor of Arts with honors from the University of Malta as well as a Bachelor of Philosophy from Heythrop College at the University of London. He received a Master of Arts from the University of Malta and completed his Ph.D. at SUNY-Binghamton. He is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English. In addition to serving as the Director of The Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program, he is currently Director of the PhD in Literature Program at the University of Notre Dame, Co-Director of the Italian Studies Program, and a Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies.

Buttigieg specializes in modern European literature, critical theory, and the relationship between culture and politics. In addition to numerous articles, Buttigieg has authored a book on James Joyce’s aesthetics, A Portrait of the Artist in Different Perspective. He is also the editor and translator of the multi-volume complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, a project that was supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Several of his articles on Gramsci have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. He was a founding member of the International Gramsci Society, of which he is president. The Italian Minister of Culture appointed him to a commission of experts to oversee the preparation of the “edizione nazionale” of Gramsci’s writings. Buttigieg serves on the editorial and advisory boards of various journals, and he is a member of the editorial collective of boundary 2.

“It is, indeed, a great privilege to be associated with The Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program and, especially, to be directly involved in implementing the bold vision that inspires it. The Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program will not only enrich the lives of exceptional students by preparing them for their future leadership roles in society, it will also better enable the University of Notre Dame to be “a powerful source for good” in the world, as its founder, Father Edward Sorin, envisaged.”